Genesis and the Age of the Earth

For many people, the account in Genesis appears to be at odds with what science tells us about ‎the age of our universe, the world, and humanity. For example, scientists date humanity to be ‎between 100,000 and 200,000 years old, the Great Barrier reef is 600,000 years old, the Green ‎River formation in Utah is 4 million years old, some dinosaur fossils are hundreds of millions ‎of years old, and we can observe stars 13 billion light-years away (their light took 13 billion ‎years to get here).‎

However, if you add up all the genealogies in the Bible from Adam to Jesus and then add 2,000 ‎years (for the time from Jesus until now), then the history recorded in the Bible is more like ‎‎6,000 years. If all the genealogies in the Old Testament are closed genealogies (without gaps), ‎then this would be a significant issue, not least because humanity appears to have been around ‎for at least 100,000 years. But the language that the Bible’s genealogies are given in, doesn’t ‎permit such a rigid understanding of them.‎

The biblical phrase “Seth became the father of Enosh” (Genesis 5:6) can equally mean “Seth ‎became the ancestor of Enosh” (see the footnote in Genesis 5:6 NIV). In fact, in Hebrew ‎‎(the language that the Old Testament was written in), there’s no way to distinguish between the ‎two, the word can take either meaning (father or ancestor), and sometimes it even takes both meanings in the same ‎verse (Numbers 36:8; Joshua 24:2; 1 Kings 11:43; 15:24; 22:50; 2 Kings 15:38; 2 Chronicles ‎‎9:31; Malachi 2:10).‎

And so, if the genealogies in Genesis, Numbers, Chronicles etc, are open genealogies (with ‎gaps), then the age of humanity is not a question that the Bible seeks to answer. It is not concerned with ‎scientific questions of age, but rather with establishing a line of descent, and the precision ‎required for this during the time in which Old Testament was written, didn’t require tracing an ‎unbroken line through every single generation. Freeing the Bible from the burden of answering ‎our scientific questions (which it was never written to answer) enables us to see that there is no ‎contradiction between the scientific and the biblical accounts of humanity.‎

But what about a 4 million year old river formation? Or a 65 million year old dinosaur fossil? ‎Or light from stars that has taken 13 billion years to reach us? There’s no way that humanity is ‎that old. If it is insisted that the six days of Genesis 1 are periods of 24 hours, then a number of ‎conflicts arise between science and the Bible. However, in the account of creation in Genesis 1, ‎the use of the word ‘day’ is much more flexible than that. Its first occurrence reads: “God called ‎the light ‘day’,” (Genesis‬ 1:5‬) which is clearly not referring to a period of 24 hours.‎

At the end of the creation account, it reads: “This is the account of the heavens and the earth ‎when they were created, when (lit. ‘in the day’) the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” ‎‎(Genesis‬ 2:4‬), using the singular ‘day’ to refer to the whole creation week. Moreover, unlike the ‎first six days, the seventh day doesn’t come to an end, suggesting that we are still in God’s ‎Sabbath day of rest, since God’s “works have been finished since the creation of the world” ‎‎(Hebrews 4:3).‎

For these reasons, Christians, going right back to the early church fathers (e.g. Philo, Clement of ‎Alexandria, Augustine), have taken Genesis 1, not as a scientific text book that answers the ‎questions that we want to ask (how? and how long?), but as a narrative that outlines the ‎orderliness of creation, answering the questions the author was intending to address (who? and ‎why?).‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ In the scope of 2,000 years church history, young earth creationism is a very recent ‎phenomenon (less than 100 years old).‎

Genesis 1 and modern science both attest to the universe having a beginning, and beginning as a ‎primordial ‘blob’, which is now formed and filled. While science describes an expansion and ‎inflation of the universe, the Bible describes it as the Lord stretching out the heavens (Isaiah ‎‎45:12; Jeremiah 10:12; 51:15). Of course, this doesn’t prove that Genesis got it right, but it does ‎demonstrate a consistency.‎

As an unbeliever, Dr. Andrew Parker wrote a scientific account of the Cambrian explosion ‎called In the Blink of an Eye, only to discover what he calls “a whole series of parallels ‎between Genesis 1 and the modern, scientific account of life’s history” (Parker, The Genesis ‎Enigma, xii). Dr. Parker has subsequently written on the striking parallels between ‎the account in Genesis 1 and the scientific history of the earth in The Genesis Enigma: Why ‎the First Book of Bible is Scientifically Accurate.‎

This is precisely what we would expect if there is coherence between God’s general revelation ‎‎(studied in science) and God’s special revelation (studied in theology). We can properly talk ‎about a history of creation: the account of creation in Genesis 1 is a historical account in ‎temporal sequence. And yet, it was not written as a scientific account, and so words like ‘day’ ‎may be used more generally, as in ‘the day of the dinosaurs’. Indeed, when the order of Genesis ‎‎1 is compared to the scientific account of the beginning of the universe and of life on earth, we ‎see so many parallels that a natural synthesis is almost hard to avoid:‎
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Genesis 1 Description

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Scientific Description

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1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

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The Big Bang.

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2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and ‎the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

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The universe begins as a primordial ‘blob’ of matter and energy.

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3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

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The first star is born.

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6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from ‎water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water ‎above it. And it was so.

9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ‎ground appear.” And it was so.

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Pangaea rises above sea level and breaks up into continents.

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11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the ‎land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so.

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The beginning of life: photosynthetic organisms (plants).

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14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from ‎the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be ‎lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two ‎great lights – the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night [“made to ‎govern” indicating an appointment, not a new creation].

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The orbits of the earth and moon stabilise (seasons, days, ‎years).

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20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the ‎earth across the expanse of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every ‎living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged ‎bird according to its kind.

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The Cambrian explosion.

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24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: ‎livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” ‎And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according ‎to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.

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Creatures begin to walk on dry land.

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26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over ‎the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the ‎creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image ‎of God he created him; male and female he created them.